Influential Women: Ketki Haridas, Leads With Courage at the Intersection of Silicon, Software, and Cloud Performance

CA, UNITED STATES, November 12, 2026 /EINPresswire.com/ — Senior Platform System Engineer at Microsoft, Ketki Haridas Drives Performance Validation for Azure’s ARM-based Server Processors and Champions Greater Representation of Women in Hardware Engineering

Mountain View, California – Ketki Haridas is a Senior Platform System Engineer at Microsoft, where she leads performance validation for Azure’s Cobalt ARM-based server processors, technology that helps power cloud services used by millions of people around the world. With nearly a decade of experience spanning cloud computing, computer architecture, and systems performance engineering, she has built a career at the intersection of hardware and software. Her work ensures that cutting-edge silicon delivers the performance, efficiency, and reliability required to support Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure. Her areas of expertise include CPU, system, server, cloud, software, post-silicon, GPU, and database performance. Ketki has made the invisible details of modern computing her specialty.

Ketki’s journey began in Mumbai, where she earned a Bachelor of Engineering in Information Technology from the University of Mumbai. She then left home to pursue a master’s degree in the United States, uncertain of where the path would lead but willing to embrace that uncertainty in pursuit of something bigger. She went on to earn a Master of Science in Computer Science from the University of Colorado Denver. That willingness to step into the unknown has remained one of the defining features of her career. She is a member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) and the Computer Society of India (CSI), and she speaks English, Hindi, and Marathi.

Before joining Microsoft, Ketki spent six years at Intel, where she evaluated next-generation CPU architectures, characterized enterprise database workloads, and provided performance insights that influenced future processor innovations. Those years gave her a deep appreciation for the technology that quietly powers everyday experiences. They also sparked her passion for understanding how software and silicon work together at scale.

At Microsoft, her impact has been both measurable and transformative. Ketki has played a pivotal role in advancing Azure’s cloud infrastructure through impactful performance optimizations and technical innovation. She contributed to a 40% performance improvement on Microsoft’s Cobalt 100 processor and led a cross-functional engineering initiative that increased Azure networking throughput by 50% through extensive investigation, experimentation, and collaboration. These advancements strengthened platform competitiveness, accelerated Cobalt customer adoption, and contributed to Azure’s revenue growth and operational efficiency.

Ketki also pioneered AI-driven automation frameworks that identified over 100 platform performance issues, accelerating validation, enabling early architectural improvements, and enhancing the reliability and scalability of Azure deployments worldwide. Her contributions demonstrate a strong ability to translate complex engineering challenges into measurable technical achievements and meaningful business outcomes.

Even so, Ketki considers her proudest achievement to be the resilience she developed along the way rather than any performance metric or technical milestone. As a woman pursuing a career in hardware and systems engineering, she often found herself in rooms where few people shared her background. Rather than treating that as a limitation, she learned to see it as a strength. Her curiosity, persistence, and willingness to ask the questions others might overlook became some of her greatest assets. For Ketki, confidence did not come first; courage did, and confidence followed.

Ketki attributes her success to a strong educational foundation, a deep curiosity about computer architecture and the way hardware and software interact, and a persistent, problem-solving mindset. All of these were supported by a family that placed great value on education. Those early lessons continue to shape how she approaches complex technical challenges and how she supports the people around her.

Her advice to young women entering the technology industry is to build a solid foundation in both software and hardware fundamentals. She encourages them to explore niche and highly impactful roles such as performance engineering and to pursue STEM careers with confidence, even in spaces where representation is still limited. Above all, she urges them not to wait until they feel ready. In her experience, the opportunities that change a life often arrive before confidence does, so she encourages women to take the seat, raise their hands, and trust that they will grow into the challenge.

Ketki identifies the low representation of women in hardware and performance engineering roles as one of the biggest challenges in her field. At the same time, she sees tremendous opportunity in the impact engineers can create by optimizing hardware and software interactions at cloud scale, from improving system throughput to strengthening reliability for large-scale infrastructure. That combination of challenge and possibility fuels her commitment to both technical excellence and mentorship.

The values that matter most to Ketki are education, curiosity, independence, and a sincere commitment to mentoring and encouraging others to explore STEM. She is passionate about guiding aspiring engineers and helping more women pursue careers in hardware, cloud infrastructure, and systems engineering. For her, leadership is not about having every answer but about creating clarity, embracing challenges, and helping others recognize the possibilities within themselves.

Her commitment to service began long before her current role. As Community Relationship Officer at Vidyalankar Institute of Technology, she served as Convenor of the Vidyalankar Volunteering Committee, organized the Voteathon initiative to raise awareness of voter registration, and led community education awareness efforts. She also served as Project Leader at BHAU Institute of Technology in Pune, where she led a national-level social project focused on teaching municipal school students.

From Mumbai to the heart of Microsoft’s cloud infrastructure, Ketki has shown that courage can open doors long before confidence arrives. In an industry defined by innovation, Ketki Haridas is building more than technology; she is helping create a future in which more women see themselves as its architects.

Learn More about Ketki Haridas:

Through her Influential Women profile: https://influentialwomen.com/connect/ketki-haridas

Influential Women

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Editorial Team
Influential Women
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